Utah's Summer Smog Season Gets Underway

Driving less is one way Utahns can help protect the air from smog buildups on summer afternoons. Utahns often overlook the danger ozone pollution poses on their health.

Credit Utah Department of Transportation

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Utah’s smog season is underway. Some call it Utah’s overlooked pollution problem.

Michelle Hofmann, a pediatrician and founder of the health advocacy group Breathe Utah, is used to hearing people complain about sooty pollution in the winter. But she says it’s harder for patients to grasp the impacts of ground-level ozone pollution, since it’s odorless and colorless.

“Immediately when you breathe it, it is potentially injurious to the lungs,” she says. “It has been likened to causing a sunburn on the lungs. They feel like it might be extreme heat that’s causing their chest tightness or difficulty breathing. It probably is some of that, but it is probably also ozone air pollution.”

Utah’s summer pollution season officially started on Thursday. The Utah Division of Air Quality has a smartphone app to track current ozone levels and a 3-day forecast. D-A-Q’s web page also has up-to-the-hour information and a daily email advisory. In addition, the Utah Health Department has a pollution-symptom tracker.

Hofmann says that helps people anticipate the times when ozone pollution is likely to become a problem for them.

“Really getting in tune with what the current levels will help individuals decide whether they are sensitive and at what level they are sensitive,” she says. “We have a current air-quality standard – a national standard of 75 parts per billion – and that may not be sufficiently protective of everyone.”

Hofmann advises doing intense outdoor activities before lunch and after dinner. Air-quality officials point out that people can also spare the air of needless pollution. One way is to drive less.

Jonathan Samet, chairman of Preventative Medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, focused his keynote speech on what else decision-makers need to know to build on America’s progress in tackling pollution.

“Research is important,” Samet said after his talk, “and we need it to guide the policymakers, so we can focus in on those sources that may be most critical.”

New clean fuel, clean car standards promise to be the single best way to clean up Utah’s air. State leaders say they want to accelerate these so-called Tier 3 rules in Utah. Yet, car buyers are already taking matters into their own hands, at the steering wheel.

Another air-scrubbing storm has just passed through Salt Lake City. But Tom Hemmersmeier is still thinking about clean cars.